I got a D200 in 2005 and since it was my first DSLR, it was not only the best thing since sliced bread, it was the best thing since bread.

Over a couple years I started to chafe over some of the limitations, particularly low light capabilities since I did a lot of indoor shots. So in 2008 I got a D3.

The world opened up and suddenly the D3 was the best thing since bread with jam. The D200 got used occasionally for studio use (it had a built-in flash that could command an off-camera speedlight). Eventually I got a second speedlight and the D200 sat on the shelf for several years. I eventually donated it to a kid who wanted to take photos (along with the 18-200 lens).

I can't say the D3 made me a better photographer. That probably hasn't happened yet, even with a D4 and D5 and D800e. Maybe the D850 will do it?

Vive la GAS!!!

I have taken quite a bit of heat over the past couple of weeks or so related to comments I've made in response to folks who have asked about updating or upgrading equipment. As a retired engineer I am fully aware that there are times when my comments and suggestions come from a different direction from what seems like the main current here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are not valid. It is never my intent, however, to provide any suggestion that is blatantly in error (which I was recently accused of doing) or leading anyone down a wrong path. For that reason, I rarely provide anything but very general comments around equipment which I have not personally used, nor do I ever tell anyone that they should buy <this> or <that> specific piece of equipment, even if it is something that I own and have significant experience and knowledge about. Also for that reason, I decided to conduct a personal experiment to see if my thinking had gone afoul or awry somewhere along the way. The results, which were more than a little bit interesting and surprising to me, are summarized here.

Before I get into specifics, I'd like to reference a well-known story. It's about frog and a big pot of hot water. It seems that when the frog jumped into the pot which contained hot water, he knew immediately that he was in trouble, jumped out of the pot, and life continued just fine, once the frog recovered from the realization that he had come very close to death. On a different day, however, the frog visited the pot again. Since frogs don't have good memories, he jumped in once again. This time, the water was cold, so he chose to stay there enjoying his afternoon. At some point, however, someone came in and (hopefully) without knowing that the frog was in the pot, lit the burner under it. The water warmed slowly, and the frog, unable to sense the gradual change in the temperature of the water, slowly cooked in his own swimming pool. I'll be honest...I've never tried this, and have no intention to do so. I don't know if things would really happen this way or not. But presuming that they would, the story illustrates something that is true...gradual change can go undetected, resulting in our sometimes suddenly finding ourselves somewhere we didn't realize that we were going. To an extent, this happened to me during this experiment.

My methodology this week was to intentionally put away all of my most up to date equipment and for the entire week use only two pieces of photographic equipment...my D300s and my 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 AF-S zoom. The D300s undid all of my recent camera updating, and the lens undid all of the upgrading that I have done over the years. The experiment was supposed to run all the way through at least Saturday, but I called it at the end of the day yesterday. Too much limitation and frustration, and I think that I learned everything that I needed to know in 4 days. Today was spent doing a little cleanup and calibration around a few of the observations, just to make certain that there were no special cases reported as generalizations.

Here's what I learned...

First...there were a number of very disappointing revelations about the D300s. I am always sympathetic to budgetary restrictions. Limited discretionary funds kept me shooting a D200 from 2007 until 2017, even though I badly wanted a D300 from the time that model was introduced. But I grew to love the D200, then the D300&D300s when I traded some used equipment for one of each of them. Everyone else had moved on to other cameras, but I was very happy with those. I did move on to a D810, then a D850 and a D500 after my wife got me interested in night sky photography, but I resolved to hang on to at least the D300s just because I loved it and because there might be times when its 12MP images were just right. But my experiment revealed that as much as I liked it, the D300s was pretty deficient in a number of ways.

First, it is limited to ISO 3200 (plus one stop). It's good to maybe 640 or 800. No way it is useful for the low light photography that I've come to enjoy. Second...its dynamic range is quite limited compared to today's cameras. The D850 has a 2.5 stop advantage on dynamic range, and at least a 2.25 stop advantage at all sensitivities above that. The D500 is almost as good. And this difference is quite discernible when comparing images from the two cameras.

Second, it is just slow. And not only autofocus, which worked just fine. The entire cadence of operations when capturing an image is just long and drawn out, regardless of shutter speed. When the shutter release is pressed, each step in capturing the exposure is individually audible...first the mirror moving, then the shutter opening, then the mirror returning. This is completely unlike the single "click" audible when the D500 shutter is released.

Finally, image quality is just disappointing (and not just resolution). I loved this camera when I it was my primary. But its images just don't hold up when compared with those from the D500, even when using the admittedly mediocre 18-200mm lens. White areas are not rendered as uniformly white, boundaries between contrasting areas are not rendered well, and halos are visible in light areas adjacent to dark areas (independent of lens choice).

For those of you who are still shooting the D300, the purpose of this experiment is not at all to diminish the value of what you are doing. I was very happy with the images I captured with this camera, and am still glad to have them. Only now, and only going back to the previous images are the shortcomings obvious. I still have no plans to ditch or discard either my D300 or D300s. But once I recover from my newly discovered disappointment, I'm going to have to revisit both my intentions and my strategies.

As for the lens, I'm not sure exactly what to think or what to say. Learning that it is a pretty good general purpose lens on the D500 was pretty encouraging. But seeing the results it provided on the D300s was a major disappointment, because my intent was for it to live on that camera most of the time. And it was a major shock learning that its entire focus range is squeezed between 1.5 feet and 3 feet on the distance scale at 18mm. Again, I'll have to revisit my intentions and strategies.

I want to be very clear here. My intent is absolutely not to cast aspersions on any piece of equipment. My intent was to determine for myself whether I was correct to encourage folks who can do so to be open to updating and upgrading equipment. The technology has advanced a long way in the past 25 years. It has advanced a long way in the past 13 years or so since I got my first digital cameras. It has advanced a long way in the 10 years since the D300 was introduced. I believe that we may be approaching a point at which advances will be quite a bit more gradual.

I had a pretty cool closing paragraph all worked out in my head, but I'll not include it here. Instead, I'll just say that I know that I have written several places about my friend who creates great art with modest materials and supplies. I haven't divulged until now that she would really like to have a camera with additional capabilities. She has several specific reasons behind that desire. I would ask that we be careful telling folks that "It's the photographer, not the camera," or "Learn to use what you have now." I've noticed that it seems to be mostly be photographers with very capable equipment who tell people one or the other of those things.

By the way...it's not just us as photographers. Since I have returned to education, I have become very aware of one of the other "great lies" of our current society. It's the one that says, "You can be anything that you want to be." That sounds great, but it's just not true. An example, you say? Since adolescence, I have been 6'2" tall. My ideal weight is somewhere around 185 pounds. (Yes...I weigh more than that now.) It has never mattered whether I might really like horses, speed, and competition. There is no way that I could ever have been a jockey. Never could have happened. Just don't meet the hard and fast requirements. The trick is to be encouraging without misleading those around us.

I have taken quite a bit of heat over the past couple of weeks or so related to comments I've made in response to folks who have asked about updating or upgrading equipment. As a retired engineer I am fully aware that there are times when my comments and suggestions come from a different direction from what seems like the main current here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are not valid. It is never my intent, however, to provide any suggestion that is blatantly in error (which I was recently accused of doing) or leading anyone down a wrong path. For that reason, I rarely provide anything but very general comments around equipment which I have not personally used, nor do I ever tell anyone that they should buy <this> or <that> specific piece of equipment, even if it is something that I own and have significant experience and knowledge about. Also for that reason, I decided to conduct a personal experiment to see if my thinking had gone afoul or awry somewhere along the way. The results, which were more than a little bit interesting and surprising to me, are summarized here.

Before I get into specifics, I'd like to reference a well-known story. It's about frog and a big pot of hot water. It seems that when the frog jumped into the pot which contained hot water, he knew immediately that he was in trouble, jumped out of the pot, and life continued just fine, once the frog recovered from the realization that he had come very close to death. On a different day, however, the frog visited the pot again. Since frogs don't have good memories, he jumped in once again. This time, the water was cold, so he chose to stay there enjoying his afternoon. At some point, however, someone came in and (hopefully) without knowing that the frog was in the pot, lit the burner under it. The water warmed slowly, and the frog, unable to sense the gradual change in the temperature of the water, slowly cooked in his own swimming pool. I'll be honest...I've never tried this, and have no intention to do so. I don't know if things would really happen this way or not. But presuming that they would, the story illustrates something that is true...gradual change can go undetected, resulting in our sometimes suddenly finding ourselves somewhere we didn't realize that we were going. To an extent, this happened to me during this experiment.

My methodology this week was to intentionally put away all of my most up to date equipment and for the entire week use only two pieces of photographic equipment...my D300s and my 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 AF-S zoom. The D300s undid all of my recent camera updating, and the lens undid all of the upgrading that I have done over the years. The experiment was supposed to run all the way through at least Saturday, but I called it at the end of the day yesterday. Too much limitation and frustration, and I think that I learned everything that I needed to know in 4 days. Today was spent doing a little cleanup and calibration around a few of the observations, just to make certain that there were no special cases reported as generalizations.

Here's what I learned...

First...there were a number of very disappointing revelations about the D300s. I am always sympathetic to budgetary restrictions. Limited discretionary funds kept me shooting a D200 from 2007 until 2017, even though I badly wanted a D300 from the time that model was introduced. But I grew to love the D200, then the D300&D300s when I traded some used equipment for one of each of them. Everyone else had moved on to other cameras, but I was very happy with those. I did move on to a D810, then a D850 and a D500 after my wife got me interested in night sky photography, but I resolved to hang on to at least the D300s just because I loved it and because there might be times when its 12MP images were just right. But my experiment revealed that as much as I liked it, the D300s was pretty deficient in a number of ways.

First, it is limited to ISO 3200 (plus one stop). It's good to maybe 640 or 800. No way it is useful for the low light photography that I've come to enjoy. Second...its dynamic range is quite limited compared to today's cameras. The D850 has a 2.5 stop advantage on dynamic range, and at least a 2.25 stop advantage at all sensitivities above that. The D500 is almost as good. And this difference is quite discernible when comparing images from the two cameras.

Second, it is just slow. And not only autofocus, which worked just fine. The entire cadence of operations when capturing an image is just long and drawn out, regardless of shutter speed. When the shutter release is pressed, each step in capturing the exposure is individually audible...first the mirror moving, then the shutter opening, then the mirror returning. This is completely unlike the single "click" audible when the D500 shutter is released.

Finally, image quality is just disappointing (and not just resolution). I loved this camera when I it was my primary. But its images just don't hold up when compared with those from the D500, even when using the admittedly mediocre 18-200mm lens. White areas are not rendered as uniformly white, boundaries between contrasting areas are not rendered well, and halos are visible in light areas adjacent to dark areas (independent of lens choice).

For those of you who are still shooting the D300, the purpose of this experiment is not at all to diminish the value of what you are doing. I was very happy with the images I captured with this camera, and am still glad to have them. Only now, and only going back to the previous images are the shortcomings obvious. I still have no plans to ditch or discard either my D300 or D300s. But once I recover from my newly discovered disappointment, I'm going to have to revisit both my intentions and my strategies.

As for the lens, I'm not sure exactly what to think or what to say. Learning that it is a pretty good general purpose lens on the D500 was pretty encouraging. But seeing the results it provided on the D300s was a major disappointment, because my intent was for it to live on that camera most of the time. And it was a major shock learning that its entire focus range is squeezed between 1.5 feet and 3 feet on the distance scale at 18mm. Again, I'll have to revisit my intentions and strategies.

I want to be very clear here. My intent is absolutely not to cast aspersions on any piece of equipment. My intent was to determine for myself whether I was correct to encourage folks who can do so to be open to updating and upgrading equipment. The technology has advanced a long way in the past 25 years. It has advanced a long way in the past 13 years or so since I got my first digital cameras. It has advanced a long way in the 10 years since the D300 was introduced. I believe that we may be approaching a point at which advances will be quite a bit more gradual.

I had a pretty cool closing paragraph all worked out in my head, but I'll not include it here. Instead, I'll just say that I know that I have written several places about my friend who creates great art with modest materials and supplies. I haven't divulged until now that she would really like to have a camera with additional capabilities. She has several specific reasons behind that desire. I would ask that we be careful telling folks that "It's the photographer, not the camera," or "Learn to use what you have now." I've noticed that it seems to be mostly be photographers with very capable equipment who tell people one or the other of those things.